June 9, 2011

(The photograph is something the camera took on its own, as I was sliding the cover closed. It looks like comets so I called this café post "Kohoutek" after the wonderfully overhyped comet that seemed, at the time — do you remember? — to symbolize the lameness of Gerald Ford. I wrote Kafe Kohoutek instead of Kohoutek Café for this café post — a "café post" is just an open thread — because there used to be a really cool restaurant here in Madison called Kafe Kohoutek. That was back in the '90s. The name was a wry reference back to the fizzled comet, 90s nostalgia for the 70s. And here I am now, in the 10s, reminiscing about the 70s and the 90s, all because my camera had a mind of its own.)

Ford wasn't that lame in some respects. As I once said here, the Nixon pardon got the country away from the whole 'Nam-Nixon thing quicker than the Demos would have liked - they would have loved to have milked an impeachment trial through the election.

And this from someone who thought Ford was dead wrong doing it at the time.

PS I know I mentioned there hadn't been a cafe in a day or so, but you didn't have to put up one just for me... ;)

I remember Kafe Kahoutek (where Williamson Bicycles is now), and the comet! The Kafe was much cooler, with all kinds of weird elements that didn't quite go together (like a giant mural of a train on one wall, and plants on each table that could have been in The Little Shop of Horrors).

I went to "Amish Country" in Columbia County in Wisconsin, north of Pardeeville.

Little did I know Thursday is their day of rest or for weddings.

I saw 4 Amish total and none of their businesses were open. The bakery is only open on Friday and Saturday.

I was hoping to see some hot Amish hog. Are they cut or uncut?

These small towns in Wisconsin are so fucking depressing. They have like 20 boarded up businesses, one local bar with the owners living on the second floor and a post office and a tea party sign and a for sale sign on every other house.

If you have registration on .se, that means when the next Bissage disappears, you might be able to ascertain his/her status.

Assuming someone will answer the email and at least clue people in. A casual (couple emails a year if she wasn't coming east)friend in the midwest died a year and a half ago, and I thought she was busy.

Family didn't have the heart to send out an email to her list, I guess. (It was sudden and awful for them all.)

Perhaps the funniest thing I can recall in The National Lampoon Magazine was in a 1974 issue - within a 3-4 page pulp paper insert in the magazine which was formated to resemble a newspaper. I believe it was entitled "News on the March", and it had outrageously satirical articles pretty much like The Onion. In the issue that addressed Kahoutek they had photograph in the "above the fold" position, beneath which was a caption which read something like "Mt. Palomar Observatory image of Comet Kahoutek blazing across the western sky, taken on Feb. 11 at 8:34:56 pm MST, using Panatomic-X film, taken at an aperture of f/22, and exposed for 25 seconds." And, of course, the caption was just beneath a perfectly black rectangle.